Puzzle Bobble + Spinner

[whynotpizza]

Hey gang,

Anyone have the "secret sauce" to make Puzzle Bobble (any variant) work with a spinner?

This game would rock if you could use a spinner...

  David

[Ginsu Victim]

I've always wanted to do the same thing. Too bad I don't have a spinner anymore (mine died), but I'd love to know a way to do this.

[nexus6]

someone in the forum have made a spinner hack for timepilot and gyruss. i would love to see pb with spinnercontrols.

[bkenobi]

I just checked MAWS and was surprised that there are no Puzzle games that use the Dial control.  There are really no Puzzle Bobble/Bust-A-Move type games that use a spinner?!  I mean, that's what you would intuitively think the original controls are, wouldn't you?   

[Ginsu Victim]

someone in the forum have made a spinner hack for timepilot and gyruss. i would love to see pb with spinnercontrols.

Yep, and I was thinking about Puzzle Bobble back when that thread happened.

[u_rebelscum]

I just checked MAWS and was surprised that there are no Puzzle games that use the Dial control.  There are really no Puzzle Bobble/Bust-A-Move type games that use a spinner?!  I mean, that's what you would intuitively think the original controls are, wouldn't you?   

The problem with looking at maws is maws only lists one input type per game.  So if a game has, for example, a dipswitch to switch between using a joystick and a spinner, maws will only list "8way joy".

That's where ROM Lister is the way go.  I got (no clones):
bublbob2     Bubble Bobble II
bubblem      Bubble Memories: The Story Of Bubble Bobble III
pbobble2     Puzzle Bobble 2
pbobble3     Puzzle Bobble 3
pbobble4     Puzzle Bobble 4

The search string was:
(rotary | dial) & (!cloneof & !emulation=preliminary) &  !('BIOS') & (bubble | bobble | puzzle)
(grey out the inputs you don't care if they have or not)

Anyway, all these games have both 8-way joys and spinners and no dipswitches, so I'd guess you start the game press F2 and set the input to spinner in the game's settings menu.

[bkenobi]

Cool!  I can add these to my driving cab then!  That will give me head-on-head puzzle bobble action!   

[nexus6]

OMG!!! i need spinners - immediatelly!

[Bobulus]

Hmm...a little stumped. I loaded up Puzzle Bobble 2, and it does have Dial control settings in mame, but they don't work by default, and there seems to be nothing in the F2 menu to enable it. (There isn't a DIP switch menu, either).

[surface tension]

Cool!  I can add these to my driving cab then!  That will give me head-on-head puzzle bobble action!   

Hehe, I can't help picturing this in my mind 


Bobulus... do you have 'mouse' enabled in mame.ini?

[Bobulus]

Bobulus... do you have 'mouse' enabled in mame.ini?

I was testing this on my normal computer and not my cabinet, but I believe I did. In any case, even the mame default keyboard inc/dec dial keys weren't doing anything.

[bkenobi]

Hehe, I can't help picturing this in my mind 

I don't have spinners on my main cab, but I have 360° steering wheels on my driving cab.  I have a few spinner games set up (camaltry is my personal favorite) and they work reasonably well, so I figure puzzle bobble should be fine.  It won't play like the original obviously, but if it's fun then I'll be happy.

[SlayerAlex]

Hmm...a little stumped. I loaded up Puzzle Bobble 2, and it does have Dial control settings in mame, but they don't work by default, and there seems to be nothing in the F2 menu to enable it. (There isn't a DIP switch menu, either).

yeah im with you.  has anyone ever gotten this to work before? i dont see how to enable it

[Haze]

The Taito F3 system supports spinners as an Input, the Puzzle Bobble games however have no option to use them.

The Spinner / Paddle inputs can only be used with some of the Arkanoid style games, not Puzzle Bobble.

This is how the arcade works, and without reprogramming the original game to have non-linear turning, and spinner inputs there is nothing you can do about it.

[Bobulus]

That's what I figured, but I was hoping I was wrong and mame was 'smart' enough to filter out system/game input differences like that, such that a search such as Rebelscum's would return the right info. Oh well.

[u_rebelscum]

That's what I figured, but I was hoping I was wrong and mame was 'smart' enough to filter out system/game input differences like that, such that a search such as Rebelscum's would return the right info.

M'eh.  This has been, er, "discussed" many times, and I'm sick of 'em now.*

Mame is designed to emulate the original chips and circuits (aka "hardware") as exactly as possible.  What's "possible" depends on who's writing the game driver.  If the original circuits had the wiring for an input, mame could/should  include that info since that's what the circuits had, even if the original game player didn't have access to that "input", or if it wasn't actually hooked up to a device.

Including the info can cause confuses with mame users.  Since mame is about emulating the original circuits, though, this isn't much of an issue to mame.  Some of MameDev expressed that things like the button label, whether the button was hidden, or whether the input wasn't used at all (vs if the circuits were designed for it) was outside of mame's scope.

Which was one of the reasons controls.ini project was started; let mame coders worry about emulation, and keep the "it was 'fire' not 'shoot'", "the button wasn't wasn't usable by the player therefore it didn't exist"/"the original hardware had a hidden button wired up and so mame should document it" arguments elsewhere.


* My position:
Don't waste MameDev's time with minor issues that can be solved outside of mame; let them code what they want.  It would be cool if mame had more complete documentation outside the chips & circuits, but not if it takes away from the hardcore coding the few people who volunteer to code mame.

[saurian333]

Alternatively, you could install a similar game on your MAME system.

Snood is a Windows game with the same concept.  It's not free, but it's an awesome game.  It uses the mouse for input, IIRC, so you could use your spinner with it.

On Linux, I know of lots of clones (my favorite is Frozen Bubble), but I haven't found one yet that uses the mouse.